Author Ben Fahy

News
Heinz Wattie’s and Running with Scissors celebrate the art of sauce extraction
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Wattie’s tomato sauce is a staple of many a pantry, fridge or glove box in New Zealand. And whether it’s the heel of a hand planted on the base of the bottle, some vigorous shaking or an intense windmill action, passionate Kiwi sauce fans employ a range of techniques to get every last drop of that glorious red elixir out of the bottle. Now, to launch its new stuck-sauce solution, the Upside Down Bottle, Heinz Wattie’s and Running with Scissors have launched a new brand campaign that celebrates that ingenuity.

News
Hutchwilco and DDB Group aim to protect fisherman by protecting their secret spots
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Getting any salty old sea dog to share their secret fishing spots is nigh-on impossible. And this reluctance can sometimes be dangerous, because if they get into trouble no-one knows where they are. So, in an effort to deal with this problem and stop its customers from dying, Hutchwilco, DDB and Rapp Tribal developed a clever and helpful iPhone app that allows fishermen to log their co-ordinates to a secure database and if they don’t come home, a loved one can log on, see where they like to go, and send the details straight to the Coastguard.

News
Bait and twitch: Ogilvy injects some local charm back into the Holden brand
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It’s been a while between brand ads for Holden, with the car company favouring Clarke Gayford, a stark warehouse and a bit of glitchy electronica to spruik its various models recently. But, with the help of Ogilvy and Robber’s Dog, it’s taken a slightly more creative, emotional and story-based approach with a nice new spot featuring a twitchy main protagonist who, like the self-harming, car-loving cat in the Toyota Corolla campaign, finds unexpected peace in his vehicle.

News
TVCs of the Week: 5 February
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Hyundai’s ode to towing, Pak ‘n’ Save’s Countdown takedown and the next instalment of NZ Fire Service’s powerful campaign get the nod this week.

News
Volkswagen and DDB spread the bug
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Planking, owling, batting, breading, milking, Tebowing, horsemanning … There’s certainly no shortage of ridiculous participatory memes these days. And, to launch its new Beetle, Volkswagen and DDB have tried to create another one: Beetling.

News
Making the data sing: Facebook and iTunes collide as Kiwi website 25mostplayed.com goes live
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The confluence of data and creativity—and figuring out how to combine the ‘math and magic’ to best effect—seems destined to be one of the marketing world’s biggest challenges in coming years. And Anthony Gardiner has checked both of those boxes with a website called www.25mostplayed.com that, by combining Facebook data and iTunes data, offers a look at what’s tickling the musical fancy of different demographics.

News
Y&R mans its impressive new fort
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Over the past year and a bit, Y&R NZ has been undergoing something of a transformation (as its logo said, ‘re-est. 2012’). And, along with a new brand, new sub-brands and a swanky new office in the Auckland CBD, there have also been a host of changes to the staff roster in recent months.

News
Ford and JWT embrace Kuga karaoke for X Factor sponsorship
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Sponsorship isn’t just about logos on hoardings any more. It’s all about ‘activation’ and ‘integration’. And, with the X Factor hitting TV3’s screens this year, broadcast sponsor Ford and its agency JWT have already got in on the act with The Passengers, a campaign that aims to find “traffic light tunesters and side-street singers” to feature on a remix of Che Fu’s ‘Fade Away’. Plus: Last two X Factor judges named.

News
Mindfood iPad app gets readers’ clicks and Apple’s tick
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When tablet computers first arrived on the scene, they were slated as something of a saviour for the ailing magazine industry; a medium that offered the utility of digital technology but actually allowed publishers to make money from it. That certainly hasn’t come to pass in New Zealand yet, and there have been a couple of false starts in that space already. But with impressive download figures and an endorsement from Apple in its best of list at the end of 2012, McHugh Media’s Mindfood iPad app could just be a glimpse into the future.

Movings & Shakings
TBWA\ gets the Kane
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After seven years with DDB Group, and three in the role of experiential creative director, Steve Kane has taken a role as “a senior, multi-faceted creative director” at Whybin\TBWA, where he will work under executive creative director Andy Blood.

Movings & Shakings
Affinity ID lands a big digital fish as Doone returns home
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Back in the day, as those with a bit of length to the tooth might tell you, gold dust could be found in advertising in general as it was something of a mystery to those paying the bills. Then marketers went to school and eventually figured it out, which seemed to spell the end of going to lunch at 12 and not coming back. Digital and data are where much of the gold dust seems to be these days, as evidenced by the types of acquisitions international holding companies are making and the types of agencies that are growing rapidly. And in New Zealand, where there’s a bit of a digital skill shortage, expertise in this field is especially sought after, so indie agency Affinity ID is understandably stoked to have secured the services of Greg Doone, a Kiwi who has worked in the digital industry for over 15 years and has returned home from the UK to take up the role of general manager – discovery and development.

News
Campbell Live gets existential, as MediaWorks spoils for a 7pm fight—UPDATED
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The battle for New Zealand’s 7pm eyeballs in 2013 has been a topic of much conversation recently given the departure of Close Up last year and the arrival of Seven Sharp. That battle became even more interesting when the architect of those changes, Ross Dagan, resigned from TVNZ after less than a year in the role to head back to Australia. And, not surprisingly, Campbell Live, which kicked off again last night after its summer marketing campaign with a new logo, a new set and a renewed focus on “the issues that matter to New Zealanders”, is hoping to capitalise on the changes.

News
Wills slams Publicis Groupe for ‘cynical’ Mojo closure, Zenith Optimedia soldiers on
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The closure and voluntary liquidation of Publicis Mojo that was announced just before Christmas last year came as a shock—to the employees, to Mojo clients and to the industry as a whole. And in his many years in the ad business Graeme Wills, the ex-chairman of Publicis Mojo Australia and New Zealand and head of new agency Joy, claims he’s never seen a company behave as unprofessionally, nastily and cynically as Publicis Groupe has during this saga.

News
TVCs of the Week: 15 January
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There still seem to be a few holiday tumbleweeds out there in marcomms land, but we managed to find a few contenders, with TVNZ’s colourful Seven Sharp promo, Animates’ accurate Doomsday prediction and nzgirl’s raunchy ‘regretgasm’ spot featuring in the year’s first round.

News
Westpac’s bickering oldies usurp the throne once again with Ad Impact win
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‘Flatties’, the entertaining home loan-related follow-up to Westpac’s ‘Start Asking’ brand campaign by DDB and Prodigy, managed to beat out its big brother in the Jan/Feb instalment of Campaign Review in NZ Marketing magazine after taking second place. And it’s followed that up by winning the November round of the Colmar Brunton Ad Impact Award.

News
Planets set to align for cinema advertising, as Val Morgan rings some changes for 2013
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With a new measurement system that aims to shift the focus from buying screens to buying eyeballs, the rise of digital screening technology, an enhanced focus on cinema’s ability to add incremental reach, and a fully staffed sales team to show off its wares, Val Morgan’s sales director Natasha O’Connor says the issues that have hampered the growth of cinema advertising in New Zealand—primarily a perceived lack of accountability and additional production costs inherent in transferring TVCs to film—are now being addressed and it has taken steps to ensure cinema will be easier to plan, buy and measure in 2013.

News
The last post: you, us and Damon Wayans
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As a wise man once said, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So, given all the opinions that have flowed forth over the past week from a range of marcomms cutters and thrusters (never fear, we’ve got a few more up our sleeves to ease you into 2013), it seemed remiss of us not to do a bit of reflecting ourselves, both on the industry we cover and on the evolution of StopPress and NZ Marketing.

News
TVCs of the Week: 11 December
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The last TVC of the Week accolade for 2012 and it’s the global phenomenon that is driving dogs, mobile innuendo and kids mixed with science that taste victory.

News
Anonymous commenters rise up, use fear to rid the world of bad advertising
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A few of our esteemed contributors have placed ‘anonymous commenters’ in the villains section of our Year in Review questionnaire, as they did the year before. And it’s fair to say most would agree with those choices. But not all, it seems. We received an interesting ‘Anonymous Message’ from a generic email address with a link to a video featuring a shadowy figure in a Guy Fawkes mask outlining the surprisingly worthy, if rather threatening, intentions of anonymous commenters: to completely eliminate all bad ads from this world.

News
Spark games the system—UPDATED
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Marcomms folk are a competitive bunch. Always fighting over clients/awards/staff. And, in many cases, that competition is often a good thing for the quality of ideas, which is why PHD and its local outpost Spark Group are set to launch a new global operating system that taps into elements of gamification and crowd-sourcing to “encourage participation and collaboration” among the 2,500 staff across the Omnicom-owned group.

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